Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-09-22
CIGARArAKERs WAGES.
Exclusive Cubans and Spaniards and MIN
BILE Germans aud BOhemlans.

BILE Germans and Bohemlans.
There are two classes of cigarmakers
in New York, those who do what is
called Spanish work and those who
work with domestic tObaccos. The
men who are on Spanish work are
Cubans and Spaniards. some 200 in all.
They object to having anybody else in
their shops, and if n cigarmaker of
another nationality should get job
there they would make it so un-
pleasant for him that he would have to
leave. In this they are sustained by
their employers, who are Cubans or
Spaniards themselves, and believe
that Cubans and Spaniards are the
only people who know how to make
the best cigars. They are born with n
cigarette in their mouths, and they die
with cigar between their teeth.
The only tobacco used in some of
the Spanish workshops is imported,
while others use both Havana and
Key West tobacco, and grade of Key
West cigars in which there is fair
amount of domestic tobacco, more than
they acknowledge. All their cigars are
high-priced, and the men earn twice
as much q thousand as is paid to
other cigar-makers. 1t is common
thing for them to give out work at $50
and $35 thousand, and u cigarmaker
who is quick enough to turn out a
thousand of that grade in week
makes good wages. They have grades
of cigars for which $50 and more is
| Al nf
cigars are worth several hundred
dollars, and they are not often manu-
factured. The high prices paid make
the Cuban cigarmakers regard them
selves as the aristocrats of the trade,
though there is no such difference in
wages as the scale of prices per
thousand would seem to show. A
good cigarmaker can make two
thousand $3.50 cigars while Cuban is
making one thousand $17 OF 500 cigars.
There is jealousy and rivalry in the
Cuban shops among the rapid cigar
makers. In every shop there are two
or three who regard themselves as the
best men. They have contests, and,
the one who wins is pitted against the
best men of other shops. Pericho
Bettancourt has been regarded as the
best man for some time, though there
are others who dispute the title. On
good work he could make $40 week
and more if he kept at it steadily, and
it is even said of him that he could
make thousand $50 cigars a week.
These are wages that no maker OF
cheap cigars could ever make, as he
would have to turn out thousand
cigars day to do it,
The bulk of the cigarmakers are
Germans and Bohemians, who turn out
cigars from s. thousand to $2l.
These are the two extremes Of ordinary
trade, though there are tenement-house
cigars made as low as 81, and an occa-
sional order runs up to $50 or more.
No union man makes cigars under 81 a
thousand, and that is the limit of price
in union shop, but there are few
non-union shops that go lower. None
of these cigars is made of imported to-
bacco, though many have Sumatra
wrappers or Havana filters. A manu-.
| facturer tries to introduce some i'm.
| ported tobacco, no matter what the
quality or character, that he may call
his cigars imported, though millions OF
cigars are marked imported where not
a bit of the tobacco ever breathed salt
air before it reached New York. 1t is
| better to smoke cigar made through.
out of good domestic tobacco than OF
poor imported, though there are not
many smokers who appreciate the truth
of this.
There is more difference between
cigarmakers than between smokers.
A Sc cigarmarker could no more make
a $50 cigar than man who had never
touched piece of tobacco before
could make Sc cigar. In the first
place he would not know how tc
hold the tobacco. A skilled cigar.
maker takes up his filler, binder and
wrapper differently from an unskilled
cigarmaker, and it takes years to learr
how to do it. To become a good cigar
maker man must begin when a boy,
when his fingers are supple, and some
men cannot learn even then. Foreign
ers take more naturally to it
than American boys. An American
tends to make cigars by machinery,
and will not take the patient care it
requires to make the point taper, the
belly gradually swell, and the beauti-
full curves that fine cigar shows. He
thinks that so long as the tobacco all
gets there, sticks together, and can
be smoked, that his work is done.
That may be the reason that the cream
of the cigarmaking work is done by
foreigners, whose ancestors made
cigars and smoked them for genera